Ever thought of podcasting your research?

I’ve always been a fan of the podcast format, but lately I’ve noticed it’s picked up speed as a way to share research. A podcast is essentially a radio show online, but it’s a tricky format. Recently I was interviewed by Dr. Katie Linder for her podcast “Research in Action” and was so impressed by her professional approach and the result that I nagged her to write me a post about how to do podcasts. Katie kindly responded with not one, but two posts on how to podcast like a pro. This is part one and part two will appear in July this year.

While I knew that starting a podcast would be a fun and challenging new project, I didn’t expect that becoming a podcaster would completely reinvigorate my life as a researcher and higher education professional.

For those of you who may not know, podcasts are kind of like radio shows, with audio (and sometimes video) episodes that post on a regular basis (“Research in Action” episodes post every week, but other podcasts post monthly or in “seasons”). There are a huge range of podcast topics available and they are usually 10-60 minutes (sometimes more) in length. Some shows are solo shows, others are interview-based, and some have co-hosts. Most are available to be downloaded to mobile devices, so you can listen to them on your commute, while exercising or while doing the dishes (I’ve done all three).

Producing a weekly show has been a serious time commitment not just for me, but also for the team of people who help me with finalizing each episode. I have the fortunate circumstance of having production support from our OSU Ecampus multimedia team to edit the show’s audio as well as student workers who assist me with the transcription of each episode. My administrative assistant also assists with show notes and the instructor guides that are produced for each episode.

We pre-record episodes to make sure that we can keep up with the weekly schedule, so on days when I have access to the studio, I might record up to four different interviews for future episodes. As I write this, we just posted episode 50 and we have recorded interviews to cover us through episode 69.

In additional to these tasks, there are also several other things that go into creating each episode including coordinating studio time, booking guests, preparing questions in advance for guests to review, recording the episode and editing the episode content, which all occur before the transcript, show notes and instructor guides are created. Then, once episodes are launched, there’s also the promotion of those episodes through social media (come find us on Twitter @RIA_podcast!).

I’ve learned a ton of new skills throughout this podcast project and all the work has been totally worth it to meet the two main goals of the podcast:

Build a researcher community

Increase research literacy

A main benefit of hosting “Research in Action” is that I have a reason to cold-email pretty much any researcher, no matter how famous, and ask them to chat with me for 60 minutes. This was how I got to talk with Wendy Belcher, John Creswell, Neil Salkind and several other “celebrity” researchers.

The show has also allowed me to build my own professional network of researcher contacts that I can reach out to if I have a question, want to collaborate on a project or want to write something like this post (which Inger recommended after she was interviewed for the show – she is featured in episode 33).

More importantly, not only has my own network grown, but we’ve also created a community of “Research in Action” listeners who are regularly chatting together on Twitter, asking questions that will be featured in future episodes and answering each other’s questions about research across disciplines.

In addition to learning a ton of information that’s new to me (and hopefully to our listeners as well), hosting “Research in Action” also means that I get to talk with other researchers on a regular basis about topics related to research. It sounds kind of obvious that this might be helpful for researchers to do, but I have found that if you don’t build these kinds of networks into your life, it’s actually kind of rare, especially beyond graduate school, to talk research with other researchers in places other than conferences.

In other words, “Research in Action” has offered a great excuse to completely, and unabashedly, geek out on research-related topics with other people who want to do the same.

I hope you can see the range of benefits that being a researcher/podcaster can bring. In Part 2, I’ll share some more information about how to get started with podcasting for those of you who want to learn more.

12 thoughts on “Ever thought of podcasting your research?”

Hi Inger
I’m a PhD scholar at ISF in Sydney. My research is looking at the impact of deliberative mini-publics on political elites.
I learn a lot about democracy and democratic reform through my studies and as there is a lot of disenchantment with democracy I decided it would be good to share what I was learning, so I started a podcast last October.
It’s called Real Democracy Now! a podcast and it is a weekly interview-based program. Season 1 was about deliberative mini-publics (aka Citizens’ Juries). Season 2 started this week and it is about representative democracy more broadly. I’ve got ideas for many more seasons. It was fairly easy to get guests for Season 1 as deliberative mini-publics is my area. It’s been a little harder for Season 2, although most people are very generous with their time.
Unlike Dr Linder I do all of the post-production on my podcast, so it takes up a bit of time. Luckily I’m doing my PhD part-time and I really enjoy learning how to use the technology.
I listened to your interview with Dr Linder and my situation is similar to yours in that I couldn’t find any other podcasts that do what I’m doing on mine – a nice gap to fill.
My podcast is available on iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube amongst other places: http://bit.ly/RDNapodcast (this is link to iTunes).
Warm regards, Nivek

The Thesis Whisperer is edited by Dr Inger Mewburn, director of research training at The Australian National University. The Thesis Whisperer has contributors from around the world. Read our about page if you are interested in writing for us.